I read with interest an item by Jean-Pierre Foehn (Opening the supplier can of worms: can you really charge suppliers a fee to do electronic transactions?) that expressed, not for the first time, some fairly frank questions about electronic invoicing and the justification for transaction fees. The…

In the depths of a recession, discretionary spend is the first targetfor cost avoidance and Enterprise application upgrades are easy to avoid. But if your organization uses PeopleSoft Financials 8.8, 8.9 or 9.0, an upgrade to 9.1 might just make sense as a means of…

SRM remains a hot topic for organisations, and creating the business case for change is challenging. All of us understand SRM is the right thing to do, but putting absolute values on benefits achieved through an SRM programme is difficult. In 2009 State of Flux focused their survey…

In a recent report by Celent they report the surprisingly low rates of adoption in parts of Asia. China, Japan and India in particular are relatively slow to integrate electronic invoicing. Why is this suprising? The reasons for the slow adopting include tardy implementation of…

As the mass grounding of aircraft across most of Europe is about to enter its 5th day, the consequences to business of the major eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland are just beginning to be contemplated. The priority thus far has been to get…

Imagine this conversation between two fishermen: “How many fish did you catch?” “I saw 4 huge fish.” “But how many did you catch?” “I caught 2 but I saw 4.” “You mean you caught 2 fish?” “OK – I caught 2 fish.” Does it remind…

Late payment is a blunt P2P weapon and it’s disappointing to read in Supply Management that small suppliers are waiting longer than ever. Nick Martindale reports that research performed by BACS in the UK found small and medium-sized companies had to wait an average of…